SEO Case Study

Tag: ecommerce seo

A new client, who had used other SEO firms in the past with little to no results recently brought us on to increase their organic search results. While this SEO case study is for an e-commerce site so that the results can be quantified in dollars, we deliver similar results to local businesses and service companies using similar strategies.

As you will see with our methodology below, we were able to increase their organic search traffic 556%. That does not mean much without sales to follow, however. In addition to the organic search traffic lift, our client also saw an increase of 63% of revenue from organic search traffic. Here’s how we did it.

We began working with a new client who sells several niche high-end products on their e-commerce site, but we apply the same methodology to all clients we work with. Local clients have different requirements, but this case study shows what kind of results can be achieved with some fundamental on-page SEO and quality link building.

The client knew they needed help with their organic search rankings because they were not ranking on page 1 for any relevant keywords. Their site was converting visitors into customers with their PPC campaign, but they wanted to increase their sales from organic search results and not rely solely on PPC. This client had worked with other SEO agencies in the past. One got them in trouble with a Google algorithm update, and the next one, who they were with when they contacted us, used a clever linking scheme between participating websites. However, they were concerned about the link network being detected by Google and getting penalized again, which was a valid concern.

The first item was to cut ties with the linking scheme. Then we began building high Domain Authority links to their site because we knew a lot of links would be lost from the linking scheme and they needed to increase their Domain Authority.

In this graphic you can see the overall number of links dropped due to lost links from the link network, but the Domain Authority increased from 27 to 30 because of the new high Domain Authority links.

Next step was keyword research. After a broad list was developed, we engaged the client in a collaborative effort to select the best keywords for their website and their business. We always want to focus on products that sell the best and bring in the most revenue, and understand which products may become obsolete or discontinued so we don’t focus on those. Once the list was culled to a manageable size, we began mapping keywords to the correct pages.

After keyword mapping comes crafting Title Tags and Meta Descriptions for the pages. Once they were reviewed and approved by the client, the tags and descriptions were implemented and that’s when we saw some significant movement in keyword ranking. I received a frantic call from the client concerned that the ranking of a certain keyword had fallen dramatically. What they hadn’t realized was that another page dramatically increased in rank for that same keyword. Previously, pages were ranking for keywords that really weren’t a good match for the page, so the keyword mapping exercise helped us straighten that out. Here is a screen shot showing the increases in a few of the keywords we are tracking for this client.

Of course, there are many more on-page elements that were optimized in addition to the Title Tags and Meta Descriptions, plus we did a lot of high quality link building, but the important thing to show you are the results. Below is a chart from Google Analytics showing the increase in YOY Organic Search Traffic.

The chart shows an increase in Organic Search traffic of over 566%. While an increase in traffic is great, the only thing my client really cared about was an increase in sales. Below is a chart from Google Analytics. Because this is an ecommerce site, we were able to measure revenue tied to various traffic sources. You can see the revenue from organic search traffic was up over 63% and the number of transactions was up nearly 95%. There is not a 1:1 correlation between the increase in traffic and sales because the price point is very high and the products are in a very narrow niche. An average sale is nearly $2,000 so the conversion rate is not very high. While we are implementing some ideas to generate more sales, the increase of over 63% is a great start. And I should mention this is their slow season!

Conclusion: Our client had worked with other SEO companies who used out-dated or “blackhat” methods which got them penalized or exposed them to future penalties with link networks. This client trusted the recommendation of a reliable colleague to work with us. We’ve delivered page 1 rankings for many of the most valuable keywords in this niche which not only resulted in increased sales, but revenue that impacts their bottom line

UPDATE May 2017

The performance was updated at the end of April 2017 with the following:

In the last 30 days YOY sales from Organic Search increased $38,229 or 145%

Since we started in November 2016, YOY sales from Organic Search increased $102,821 or 118%

In the last 30 days vs previous 30 days, sales from Organic Search are up $17,386 or 37%

Sales from Paid search are up $13,601 or 517%

The paid search shown is for Google Shopping, which we’ve greatly enhanced over what their previous vendor was running. We upgraded the images, descriptions and product information to increase user engagement and click-through-rates.

In addition to the Google Shopping and Google Search, we’ve added Gmail ads for high volume, low cost, highly qualified traffic to the site, and of course we have remarketing (or retargeting) campaigns in both Google and Facebook since this is an expensive item that is not an impulse purchase. We want to re-engage prospects that are considering and purchase but have not made it to our check out “thank you” page.

Finally, we added a Facebook campaign using Carousel Ads to show multiple products in a very engaging and attractive presentation to bring highly qualified prospects to the website.

You can see we implemented a multi-channel approach to maximize visitors and sales. While we are the “SEO Guru”, our goal is to help businesses grow and thrive with highly effective and measurable campaigns for all types of businesses, not just e-commerce site.